Geographical Information System (GIS) Based Electrical Energy Theft Detector Device

Mathew Chukwu Udo, Joseph Elijah, Amit Mishra, Idris Rabiu, Fairwater S.S

The paper is a response to the urgency needed to checkmate commercial losses in electrical distribution system in Nigeria. Root causes of electrical commercial losses were investigated by field work carried out on sampled customers of 33kV Keteregi feeder in Minna, Niger State of Nigeria. Questioners were administered by interviewing customers. GIS coordinates of customers’ building were carefully taken using GPS receiver, and other information such as customer’s name, building type and meter inspection were collated. The results of the field survey revealed that most electrical energy theft is by meter bypass. A further step was taken by designing and simulating theft detector circuitry using Proteus electrical design software. The design was implemented using microcontroller for multifunction. Microcontroller checks for difference in the input and output to a prototype prepaid meter. The difference in the input and output voltage of the prototype prepaid meter indicates meter by-pass which means electrical energy theft detected. The data such as customer’s names, physical address and GIS coordinates were encoded in the memory of the microcontroller. The design implementation was tested by bypassing a prototype prepaid meter. The result obtained from bypass was noticed as Short Message Sent (SMS) through the Global System of Mobile Telephoning (GSM) interfacing the microcontroller. This shows that the GIS based electrical theft detector device designed and implemented was able to detect electrical energy loss through meter bypass.